At 11/28/12 04:42 AM, pickpocket wrote:
Breath of Fire 3. The art, storyline and progression of the main character from child to adult was fantastic. It was also ridiculously fun building a village, fishing and collecting as many dragon genes as well to see how many dragon transformations I could find. Can't beat the mature themes therein, either (getting stabbed through the chest as a child - nice.)

Excellent choice. I would say Suikoden with Dragon Warrior 4 and FF6 being not far behind.

Chrono Trigger. It has arguably the best, most richly realized cast of characters of any game in the genre, some of the most expressive pixel art I've ever seen, does crazy innovative things with sidequests and decision-making and multiple endings, and has a fun, comparatively fast-paced combat system. What's not to love?

Mother 3 and Pokemon Red/Blue are close behind. I could also potentially go to bat for Paper Mario or Golden Sun.

Yeah, EarthBound is fantastic, but Mother 3 takes it to the next level. It's got a more interesting combat system and more visual flair, but most significantly it tells a more sophisticated, nuanced story. Also, EarthBound doesn't have magical transsexuals with five-o'-clock shadow and pretty dresses who live in a giant pink seashell.

At 11/27/12 05:07 PM, Requuired wrote:
For me, I would say earthbound I love you earthbound you are my family *sniff sniff*.

I used to love the shit out of that game. It remains as a fond memory but I find no reason to replay the games in the series. They have great story lines and the characters are very likable in all of them ('cept EB Zero. Fug dat sheet.). It's a game that knows how to personally immerse players through it's story and charm, but the gameplay... Well, they'res better alternatives out there. I personally feel that the RPG element of earthbound falls flat when it comes to it's overworld gameplay. The fights aren't too impressive either, but that's not to say i got my fair share of enjoyment from the series.

Mother 3 tries to address these issues, and it does pretty good at it. The fights now have a combo system to give the player the feel of tactile feedback, which previous games lacked. Instead of having a chronological story, we now focused on multiple characters in multiple time periods, which added a level of immersion to the game and made you want to keep playing. And the story, which I didn't even think was bad in the previous games, is arguably the best storyline from any video game i have ever played ever. No game has been able to strike on such an emotional lever for me, let alone in a game intended for children...

Anyways, I've completely lost myself in a fuckfest of Earthbound related topics and arguments,

That question is gonna take a lot of debate to answer and might end in a fist fight. I will agree though that EarthBound is the best. However my favorite goes to Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen.

It has to be Xenogears, which probably has the single best storyline in any game, as well as an amazing combat system for both mecha and on foot. It's no wonder why this is my personal favorite RPG, even though I am not a huge fan of the genre myself.

i have a few in my top 5, but the best RPG ive ever played is Dragon Age Origins, you have a good bunch of dialog, romance, companion reactions based on your actions and they being present when you do them. Dialog and storywise is by miles better than mass effect. Romancing a character takes time in DAO and you can change romances (not like in me games where you had to stick with the first girl you say "hi").
Also characters remember what you said in almost every situations, not like in ME2 when Mordin acted like i was against the genophage even when i agreed to it in every dialog.
The gameplay is fantastic, like a WoW where you control 4 character at the time. you could manually control companions and program their "combat tactics" very precisely.
The micro stories have their twists, but the general story is the overdone "a blight is taking over the world" thing, but the game is long enough so you wont finish it in a few days.
The DLCs are very disappointing, i had my hopes up for "Awakening" (largest dlc campaign), but you only had the least appealing of your old companions, no romance options,and not even a cameo of your romantic interest of the original game (i romanced leliana and only got a letter of her saying she was visiting i dont know what monastery).

Now, Dragon Age 2, they took the dialog part and replaced it with ME dialog system, a huge setback, you had less options and choices rarely mattered (though your companions still "reacted" to what you said while they being present, it was in much lesser scale, and even more, if they "hated" you, they only gained a different skill than if they liked you).
The characters were bland, and even more the females, where you only got a whore and a shy girl.
i loved so much when i got to kill that madafaker of fenris, god i hated that character so much.
Also Hawke.... other factor that ruined the game
1. a character with a name (not chosen) is always a con, thus it makes it harder to relate yourself to him
2. he had a history and a family which you couldnt choose
3. can't choose his race
4. i preferred when the main character didn't talk (while the rest do ofc)

other main factor of the game is the recycled scenarios (90% of the game are the same rooms with doors locked/unlocked in a different sequence).

but one of the worst things was how fucking fast years passed, i mean, you farted, poof, 2 years. i think that in the totality of the game it passes like 7 years or more, can't remember exactly, time in which i could only think "what is my DAO hero doing right now?"

and your choices in DAO had very little effect.

i really hope that DA-3 retakes DAO system and character, or at least starts a new character, but not Hawke

That would obviously be Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. None could match the game play, rich story line and...
I'm just kidding that game was TERRIBLE! So in all seriousness my nomination would be Chrono Trigger. Loved it, the artwork was done by Akira Toriyama too, BONUS!

At 12/2/12 06:46 AM, Dysleksikk wrote:
That would obviously be Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. None could match the game play, rich story line and...
I'm just kidding that game was TERRIBLE! So in all seriousness my nomination would be Chrono Trigger. Loved it, the artwork was done by Akira Toriyama too, BONUS!

i agree, Sonic Chronicles was terrible, i got lucky that i didn't bought it, i saw the some let's plays and walktroughs

You rate the first generation Pokemon games above the second generation Pokemon games? Second generation felt like such a vast improvement over the original games.

I'm really not too sure what my favourite RPG is. There's too many that I haven't finished or haven't gotten around to playing yet. Games that I'd probably rank highly but I can't because like I say, I've not played them properly yet. As it currently stands, The Elder Scrolls games from Morrowind onwards are definitely up there with my all time favourites as if Fallout 3.

At 11/28/12 09:32 PM, orangebomb wrote:
It has to be Xenogears, which probably has the single best storyline in any game, as well as an amazing combat system for both mecha and on foot. It's no wonder why this is my personal favorite RPG, even though I am not a huge fan of the genre myself.

Chrono Cross basically used it's combat and management system from XenoGears but it's kind of more forgiving.

At 12/5/12 09:46 AM, MikeyS9607 wrote:
Then you wait for your ATB bar to fill (You can't even make it bearable by upping the speed like in FF7 and 8). Battles in FF9 are so fucking tedious.

The battles generally seemed quicker though. You got four characters charging up rather than three and I think enemies attack quicker too. At least, I've seldom had any moments were both sides were doing nothing, there was always some attack going on. In Final Fantasy VIII the enemies were really slow which often resulted in long pauses which seemed a bit silly.